White House faces rising grass-roots heat on immigration

President Barack Obama has few progressive friends remaining who haven’t switched their focus in the immigration debate — turning their sights from critics of the president’s agenda to the White House itself.

Nearly all of the grass-roots-led organizations that shape the immigration debate on the left now see the White House — and the potential for Obama to act on his own — as the most likely avenue for progress on the issue, given the GOP’s control of the House and election-year jitters.

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With White House officials keenly sensitive to any progressive criticism of its deportation policy, that shift had sparked a rift within the small world of immigration activists, most of whom have worked together for years.

But in this low-grade civil war over immigration messaging, those who want the president to act increasingly own the narrative.

The Center for American Progress and National Council of La Raza are the only groups within the progressive immigration world that aren’t demanding Obama put a stop to deportations himself — with officials from other grassroots groups saying both organizations may be too close to the White House to be objective.

“There is no doubt that some groups have at times seen administrative advocacy as being in tension with the legislative campaign, an idea we strongly reject,” said Chris Newman, the legal director of the Los Angeles-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network. “We all have our different roles to play, but there is a perception outside of the Washington Beltway that some organizations with access have become apologists for the administration.”

Officials from the major progressive immigration groups — who tend to work closely together, holding a weekly Monday afternoon conference call to discuss and debate strategy — are reluctant to attack each other directly in public.

“It’s access misinterpreted as influence,” said one official who leads an immigration group that has demanded a stop to deportations. “We operate on the fundamental rule that if they’re upset, we’re making progress. It is how this White House operates. If you’re friendly to them, they think they’ve got you in their pocket. If you’re tough with them they scream and moan and complain but it gets their attention.”

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said the push to stop deportations is so broad at the grassroots level that no Washington organization can stop it.

“It’s becoming something that you can’t control,” Gutierrez said. “People have tried to control it. This administration has put inordinate pressure on people not to criticize the president on his immigration policy and not to talk about prosecutorial discretion.”

The group most vocal in its demands that Obama act on deportations is the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, whose director, Pablo Alvarado, was arrested with Hispanic religious leaders Monday afternoon outside the White House to protest deportation policy.

NDLON was once part of the White House’s broad immigration coalition. Newman was invited to meetings with Obama and then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano during the first term.

After one 2009 meeting during which Obama mentioned but declined to act on what was then NDLON’s highest priority – restricting local law enforcement’s use of a federal program that creates deportation partnerships with federal immigration authorities.

Newman praised the president to television cameras waiting outside the meeting, he said, because Obama mentioned the issue. But in doing so, Obama said then the program would continue.

When Newman’s plane landed back in Los Angeles that night, his phone was full of text messages from his co-workers demanding to know why he had missed an opportunity to decry Obama’s ratification of a program it had worked to show was a failure.

“In my mind,” he said, “I was thinking, ‘I really wanted to get invited to the next White House meeting.”

Once NDLON started agitating loudly for Obama to stop deportations, Newman’s invitations from and contact with the White House stopped.

“There’s been no question that we’ve lost access. And I would say that – I don’t know if we lost our innocence and we got over our incredulity about promises the Obama administration had made,” Newman said. “We take comfort in knowing that our work is creating political space and that our presence is felt at the proverbial table, even if we have lost our golden ticket.”

The internal debate is centered entirely among progressive immigration organizations. The more dependent a group is on grassroots support, the more likely it is to pressure the White House to do something on deportations. The more a group’s influence relies on its access to power, the less likely it is to push back. Conservative and business-focused groups like Mike Bloomberg’s Partnership for a New American Economy, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Fwd.us have kept their attention entirely on moving legislation in Congress and have not sought to pressure Obama on deportations.

“There are differences of opinion in the movement about how to move forward on reform,” said Kica Matos of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement. “But the movement is resolute about one thing: We want reform, and we want it now.”

But while the movement is divided on what steps to take next, the White House immigration position remains the same. Officials say Obama doesn’t have the authority to act unilaterally on deportations without Congress. The closest the president has come to suggesting otherwise came during a Google Hangout last month when he said he was willing to “look at all options.”

Speaking Friday on Univision radio, Obama urged listeners to call Republicans in Congress and demand they move on immigration.

“I’ve been pushing and pushing Congress to take action,” he said. “Unfortunately, the House of Representatives has not passed a bill yet. And for it to become law, we need the House of Representatives to pass that bill. The main thing people can do right now is put pressure on Republicans who have refused so far to act.”